


Poesy

by astrid_fischer



Series: 'le révolutionnaire', an a.b.c. press publication [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-20
Updated: 2013-01-20
Packaged: 2017-11-26 06:16:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/647471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/pseuds/astrid_fischer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jehan writes a poem, and three times he doesn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poesy

The first time Courfeyrac tells him he loves him (whispered in the dark with the space heater rattling by the bed and rain falling in light _plink_ s and the covers pulled up over their heads) it’s a sonnet.

Jehan sneaks out of bed at three in the morning to write it down on the back of an envelope by the LED light from his cell phone so he doesn’t forget the words.

*** 

One of a hundred Wednesdays at work, while they’re sharing a cheese sandwich during lunch break and everything’s loud as usual and Courf is going through the newspaper for movie showings because they’ve been having an argument about whether or not _Pride and Prejudice_ is out yet, it’s a haiku.

Feuilly has been playing with Combeferre’s hand-painted Tarot set (wildly making up meanings and portents as it suits him) and he flops across the desk to ask if Courfeyrac wants to know his future.

Courf is busy reading over the listings so his tone is distracted as he answers that no, he’d rather not know beforehand if Jehan is going to redo their flat in pink, thank you very much.

They don’t live together (they’ve only _been_ together for a handful of weeks), but the way Courfeyrac says it is offhand, thoughtless, as if it’s a sure thing and they already have a studio apartment tucked into the Bastille and the only question is stripes or polka dots for the wallpaper.

Directly afterwards Courfeyrac crows in triumph as he brandishes the advertisement proving that yes, _Pride and Prejudice_ is in theaters now, and Jehan carefully writes the exact words the other man had said to Feuilly down on the edge of the newspaper, the felt tip pen bleeding through the newsprint.

There are just the right number of them, five seven five.

*** 

The day Courfeyrac comes into the office with fingerprint-shaped bruises on one forearm and a vicious red mark darkening over his eye, it’s not a poem.

He pushes Jehan away from him when he tries to touch him and yells that he _can’t fix everything, so stop trying_ , and shuts himself in the bathroom while everyone else clears out of the office.

Jehan sits by the other side of the door and talks to Courfeyrac quietly about the weekend and the weather and everything besides his father (because they can talk about his father later, or not), and after an hour Courfeyrac comes out and sinks into his arms like Jehan just might be his lifeline.

It’s not a poem this time, because poetry isn’t always enough.

*** 

The Saturday morning Courfeyrac wakes him up by leaping onto the bed fully dressed and smelling like winter, it’s a villanelle.

They go for a walk over the Pont des Arts, past padlocks gleaming like gunmetal in the sun and tags with initials etched into them and ribbons of all colors tied between the metal struts. It’s freezing, and they only have two mittens between them (so they each put one on and hold hands, and hide the unmittened hands in their own pockets) and on the other side of the bridge Courfeyrac pulls him into a tiny bakery where the warm air smells like sugar and bread, and he buys them both coffee in paper cups for two euros. They hold hands on the way home.

Jehan writes the poem about Courfeyrac’s red scarf and three years’ worth of lovers’ mismatched padlocks down in his notebook (it’s on hand, for once). He miscounts the repeating lines so that it ends up not being a proper villanelle, but is maybe something even better.

*** 

The Monday of Jehan’s twenty-third birthday, it’s free verse.

Courfeyrac is in the tiny kitchen wearing a frilly pink apron over his corduroys and v-neck shirt, making gooey chocolate chip pancakes and asking over one shoulder if sprinkles _and_ whipped cream would be considered overkill, and also if Jehan happens to have maraschino cherries on hand, hypothetically.

Jehan sits at the kitchen table in one of Courfeyrac’s striped American Apparel shirts, hair tousled and feet tucked up underneath him to avoid the cold floor.

He watches the way the other man’s shoulder blades move through the thin cotton of his shirt and writes seven unrhymed lines on the top of a yellow legal pad Combeferre must have left lying about.

*** 

The day Enjolras and Grantaire have a public fight so awful that a wine bottle gets broken and everyone wants desperately to leave but can’t and Joly actually bursts into tears, it’s nothing again.

Courf and Jehan sit in the corner leaning into each other, shoulders pressed together for reassurance as they murmur things to each other in an attempt to replace the jagged, ugly words being thrown back and forth, to cancel them out, to fix them.

It’s not a poem today, because today poetry isn’t what they need. 

*** 

The Friday afternoon Jehan, Joly, and Bossuet carry cardboard boxes of Jehan’s books and bizarrely-patterned clothing and scattered papers over to Courfeyrac’s place (where Bahorel is making a very dramatic show of being put out about moving his own things out, but absolutely ruins it by getting weepy and hugging them both a lot), Courf writes _him_ a poem.

It would make a creative writing teacher cry, and it’s written messily on the back of a picture of the two of them Grantaire had taken ages ago, but Jehan reads it over and over again until he has it memorized, until he knows every rise and fall of each scrawled letter.

*** 

The day Cosette takes the picture of them all—it's late spring slash early summer and all the windows are pushed up and the fans turned on full blast to chase away the stagnant heat—it’s a couplet.

It’s about halfway through the day when Cosette comes in to meet Marius for lunch, and to ask if she can take a group photo for her photography class. Everyone piles on and around Enjolras’ desk, much to his professed annoyance (but he’s still smiling in the picture, the big smile he doesn’t give very often) and Courfeyrac’s arm is tight around Joly’s waist and he has black spots in front of his eyes for several minutes afterwards from the flash.

The couplet doesn’t rhyme properly (it’s a slant rhyme), but he passes the slip of paper over to Courfeyrac, who reads it and replies in a whisper that he loves him, and that slant rhymes are the best kind.


End file.
